EUVC E707 | Ash Pournouri (Belong), Sundar Arvind (Mozart AI) & Daniel Waterhouse (Balderton Capital): AI Music, Control and the Next Creative Era
This special episode is an inside look at AI music from three very different vantage points: the builder, the investor, and the industry insider.
Andreas is joined by Sundar Arvind, CEO & Co-Founder at Mozart AI, building a collaborative generative audio workstation; Daniel Waterhouse, General Partner at Balderton Capital; and Ash Pournouri, Co-Founder of Belong, entrepreneur, producer, and former manager of Avicii.
Together, they unpack how AI is reshaping music creation, how serious investors underwrite risk in a litigious industry, why “one-click songs” miss the point, and whether AI expands creativity or commoditizes it.
If you want a grounded view of where the real fault lines are — rights, training data, authorship, collaboration, and the psychology of creativity — this is it.
What’s covered:
00:40 Mozart AI’s vision: a collaborative generative audio workstation
05:10 DAWs, EDM, and why tech has always expanded music creation
06:35 Why “one-prompt songs” optimise for quantity, not craft
09:20 Underwriting AI music: how VCs think about billion-dollar incumbents
13:00 Is this a new instrument or a 100x larger market?
18:45 Are professional artists already using AI tools?
21:00 Copyright, training data, and legal diligence in AI music
25:15 Philosophically: what are “rights” when machines learn from music?
33:40 Diffusion models explained simply: how AI generates sound
36:30 The return of the band? Multiplayer music creation
40:00 Ash Pournouri joins: the industry’s instinct is protection
44:10 “You can’t stop development”: why demand always wins
48:50 Packaging matters: AI as tool vs AI as replacement
51:20 Lowering thresholds and democratization across decades
56:30 Five-year predictions? We’re on the vertical part of the curve
58:10 The “vibe coding” moment for music